Homeless Teenagers and You!
excerpt from an email
From:
Dear Julie,
Thanks for the invite, I plan on attending it will be just me. My name is Ian, I went to St. Bonaventure University and lived at Mt. Irenaeus in the summer of 2006. I believe we met a few times, while you were taking classes at the institute. I remember sitting around a camp fire with you. Anyway I look forward to reconnecting with you. See you next Tuesday.
Ian
The above email is the first one I received today after inviting to dinner the 23+ recruiters who will be here for next week's Enjoy the Gap Fair.
It is such a small world! One of the recruiters is someone I met while in graduate school as he worked at a place that is one of my top 3 places on earth: Mt. Ireneaus in upstate N.Y.(my other 2 favorites are Coney Island and Mt. Saint Michel in France) The young man who wrote the email will come to campus on Tuesday to represent Mercy Home for Boys and Girls. I just perused their website again and I got chills as I read about kids, discarded by their families, who have a safe and nurturing place to grow up, thanks to Mercy Home. My year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps was spent as a youth counselor at a shelter for homeless teenaged girls. I learned so much from those young women and at the time, I was 24 and very self-centered. They challenged me, forced me to "keep it real", tested and thereby strengthened my patience. I would not trade that year for the world, yet, it was challenging enough that, like many people's experience of boot camp or hiking the appalachian trail, I would not want to do it over again. That sounds strange and negative, but it is really not. It was a year which took my beyond my comfort zone and made me deal daily with poverty (that around me and my own as I lived off a minuscule stipend) and social justice was not just an esoteric concept but something that mattered in peoples' lives immediately.
This event is co-sponsored by
I plan to spend the next few days praying for our event, that students come out for it and that the represenatives and recruiters find it to be productive. I am sure that somewhere among our students is someone who is excited by the idea of working with young people at Mercy Home. I hope they find their way to the fair! Join me in this prayer!
From:
Ian
To:
Julie
Thanks for the invite, I plan on attending it will be just me. My name is Ian, I went to St. Bonaventure University and lived at Mt. Irenaeus in the summer of 2006. I believe we met a few times, while you were taking classes at the institute. I remember sitting around a camp fire with you. Anyway I look forward to reconnecting with you. See you next Tuesday.
Ian
The above email is the first one I received today after inviting to dinner the 23+ recruiters who will be here for next week's Enjoy the Gap Fair. It is such a small world! One of the recruiters is someone I met while in graduate school as he worked at a place that is one of my top 3 places on earth: Mt. Ireneaus in upstate N.Y.(my other 2 favorites are Coney Island and Mt. Saint Michel in France) The young man who wrote the email will come to campus on Tuesday to represent Mercy Home for Boys and Girls. I just perused their website again and I got chills as I read about kids, discarded by their families, who have a safe and nurturing place to grow up, thanks to Mercy Home. My year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps was spent as a youth counselor at a shelter for homeless teenaged girls. I learned so much from those young women and at the time, I was 24 and very self-centered. They challenged me, forced me to "keep it real", tested and thereby strengthened my patience. I would not trade that year for the world, yet, it was challenging enough that, like many people's experience of boot camp or hiking the appalachian trail, I would not want to do it over again. That sounds strange and negative, but it is really not. It was a year which took my beyond my comfort zone and made me deal daily with poverty (that around me and my own as I lived off a minuscule stipend) and social justice was not just an esoteric concept but something that mattered in peoples' lives immediately.
This event is co-sponsored by
Office of Career Services, Campus Life, Campus Ministry, Center for International Studies, Volunteer Services, and Office of the Provost
I plan to spend the next few days praying for our event, that students come out for it and that the represenatives and recruiters find it to be productive. I am sure that somewhere among our students is someone who is excited by the idea of working with young people at Mercy Home. I hope they find their way to the fair! Join me in this prayer!